The next day arrived like a blade sliding from its sheath, quiet, inevitable, already wet with blood no one had spilled yet.
Inside the royal suite that had once belonged to a proud princess, Shia Solace sat cross-legged on silk sheets the color of molten gold. Morning light poured through tall arched windows and painted her long white hair in shifting silver where faint black streaks caught the sun, turning the strands into living moonlight threaded with shadow.
Her golden eyes, bright and predatory, stared at nothing while frost crept in delicate veins across the snowflake sigil glowing over her heart. For weeks she had barely left this room. Not because Ash's revenge had broken her, no.
She had simply been waiting, letting the palace breathe rumors into her ears through every guard who blushed when she smiled, every butler who stammered when she brushed his sleeve. They thought they served a fame-drunk fairy.
They had no idea they were feeding a wolf.
"Hehe, the day has finally come," she whispered, hopping off the bed with the lightness of a girl half her age, bare feet silent on marble warmed by the dawn. Then the mask slipped. The fairy vanished. What remained was stone-cold beauty carved from winter steel.
"Tsk. Like that bastard is worth me. SSS rank or not, my name will be built from my hands only." She spoke with a pride that was hard to cover.
She too had A rank Talents and bloodline, but she also had something that went against her very bloodline. An aspect that helps her in ways no one could even imagine.
[Aspect: Frozen Heart (A-rank) -A crystalline snowflake sigil branded directly over the user's heart, the only cold thing in your entire existence.
-Absolute Zero Presence
The user can drop her emotional and mana signature to be untraceable within a 30-meter radius. Detection arrays, soul-scanning treasures, and even A-rank perception talents read you as empty air. You can walk through the most heavily warded palace in the world and register as a cold breeze.
-Mirror of Still Flame
The user can create up to seven perfect clones made of solid, mirrored light. These clones radiate your exact appearance, voice, and fire/light aura, but possess zero heat or emotional presence. They can fight, speak, and even "die" convincingly, fooling all but the most intimate inspection. Only one is ever real; the rest are hollow decoys you control remotely.
-Frozen Masquerade-
Once per day, for up to one hour, the user can lock one of her mirror-clones into a perfect, autonomous performance. The chosen clone gains a fabricated heartbeat, body heat, minor emotional fluctuations, and can pass any normal truth-detection or soul-scan for the duration.
-During this time the real Shia becomes completely invisible and intangible to all forms of detection except direct physical contact. She uses this to vanish while the world believes she is still standing right in front of them.
-Drawback – Eternal Frostbite
Every second the user spends suppressing your Radiant Helios bloodline with Frozen Heart, actual ice will spread across your real body from the snowflake sigil. If the user overuses the Aspect (more than 3 hours total per week), the frost reaches your core and begins freezing your fire mana from the inside.
The only way to thaw it is to release all clones and let your natural white-gold flames burn at full power for an equal amount of time, something that cannot be done while hiding or maintaining a masquerade.
The longer the user stays off the radar, the more your own bloodline tries to kill you.]
This had been her trump card. For years she'd played the drunk-fairy to the public all while hiding the face of a stone-cold beauty.
She pressed two fingers to the snowflake. The air around her dropped ten degrees in a heartbeat. Every candle in the room guttered, flames freezing mid-flicker into sculptures of blue ice. Her golden eyes dulled to frostbitten glass as the Frozen Heart woke fully.
Across the chamber, light condensed and folded in on itself until a perfect duplicate stepped out of empty air. Same hair, same face, same royal gown of white silk that caught firelight and turned it into liquid gold. The clone even had the same faint frost creeping across its collarbones, a flawless lie.
Real Shia looked at her reflection made flesh and smiled the smile of someone who was just getting started.
"Let's see how this goes."
Both Shias turned to the window. Far below, the royal highway shimmered with heat haze as six obsidian mana-carriages thundered toward the palace gates, crimson banners snapping like fresh blood in the wind.
"If the kingdom falls today, then…" they spoke in perfect unison, voices overlapping like echoing bells.
"Go," the real Shia ordered. "I will watch from here."
The clone's lips curved into the giddy, nervous bride smile the entire court expected. Hips swaying, cheeks flushed with practiced excitement, she glided out the door to meet her doom wearing Shia's face.
The real Shia stayed at the window, frost spreading faster now, thin blue lines crawling up her neck as the snowflake burned colder than any flame.
----
In the throne room, King Caelum paced like a caged lion, face twisted between rage and forced calm. Since the shattered collar and Lyssandra's mocking note, sleep had become a stranger. Today he wore his ceremonial mantle of white gold with feathers, but the weight of Sonna's whispered promise still clung to his skin like sweat.
He could still hear her now.... literally...
'King Caelum~ Ah.... Once my son arrives, promise me you will agree to one of his requests. He won't ask for much... AH! Yes HARDER!!! Tell me Caelum.... do you promise?'
While was stuck in his own thoughts, behind him, Aster walked in perfect silence, silver eyes half-lidded, hands folded inside wide sleeves. He had not spoken since sunrise, only watching the movements of everyone.
'Mother is being strange again,' Aster he had noted seeing that his father was lacking sleep and she wasn't around. He then watched as Sonna's personal handmaid hurry past with fresh crimson roses for the welcoming bouquet.
Something about the woman's smile made his shadow twitch.
Caelum stopped at the top of the grand staircase just as Shia joined them, the clone, of course. She bounced on her toes like an overexcited bride, cheeks pink, fingers twisting in her skirts. "Father, Brother," she chirped, voice trembling with just the right number of nerves. Caelum barely glanced at her.
"You two, just follow my lead," he muttered, rolling his shoulders.
"If I agree, you agree. Understood?"
Aster's face remained smooth as glass, but inside the mirrored palace of his mind was already working. As mentioned, before he had been watching Kale, knowing that three kingdoms fell to him in six months...
He had been wondering how and hearing this strange request of his father. He couldn't help but wonder internally.
'To agree.... is that his Talent?'
Shia's clone giggled and pressed closer to Caelum's arm.
"Alright, Father… but I still want to take him for myself."
Caelum rolled his eyes, he was till reminiscing Sonna's perfume in memory, already hearing her breathy moan demanding that single promise while she rode him senseless. Outside, the mana engines of the lead carriage sighed into silence. Dust settled. Crimson banners snapped once more in the hot wind.
Kale Voss stepped down from his hovering throne, black hair whipping across those winter-blue eyes, smile sharp enough to cut throats. Sylvara glided at his left in liquid black silk, Rhea towered at his right in crimson scale armor, greatsword planted point-down behind her like a declaration of war.
He stopped ten paces from the royal family and extended one gloved hand toward Caelum, smile widening until it showed teeth.
"Fine day we're having, isn't it, Your Majesty?"